


Dilated Eyes Shooting the Breeze

by xenokattz



Series: Space Lords and Purple Butterflies [2]
Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Darcyisms, F/M, Hurts So Good, but it gets better honest, omg did I write h/c?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-18
Updated: 2012-05-18
Packaged: 2017-11-05 14:26:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/407459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenokattz/pseuds/xenokattz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint stares down the sights of his bow, his whole demeanour lose, like, no big, just picking off machine guns with my medieval weapon, y'know, since it's Tuesday, then maybe buy some eggs for breakfast with Natasha, and Darcy stops herself there because she has to be over that now. Really. They were done four years ago. He could not have been that good a lay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dilated Eyes Shooting the Breeze

**Author's Note:**

> I'm incapable of writing more than one sad ending a year despite what some people named Percy & Rae might think. ;)

So, despite knowing Hollywood is absolute walrus balls at veracity and female action heroes, Darcy is still completely surprised when ducking behind the door of her van does not, in fact, adequately protect her from a metric shitload of semi-automatic bullets.

" _Fuck!_ " she screams, diving around to the rear wheels, then, follows up with, "Fuckity fuck _fuck me_ fucking fuck-a-doodle-dandy!" And finally, " _Fuck!_ "

Someone in black drops beside her--

" _Faaaahhhck!_ "

\-- and says, "Stay close," shoving her behind him. Darcy knows that behind. She had squeezed that behind, once upon an Adele-album ago. 

"Clint?"

He ignores her-- full-on Hawkeye mode at the mo-- to stare down the sights of his bow, his whole demeanour lose, like, no big, just picking off machine guns with my medieval weapon, y'know, since it's Tuesday, then maybe buy some eggs for breakfast with Natasha, and Darcy stops herself there because she has to be over that now. Really. They were done four years ago. He could _not_ have been that good a lay. 

She keeps both hands on his back instead, Ginger Rogers by way of Michael Bay, trying to dredge a teaspoon of shame for using him as a shield when a metal van door did a sloppy mess of nothing against bullets, what can guy, body fat of zero-percent tops, going to do? For one, he could shoot machine guns with his overcompensator's slingshot so yay him. Super-plus yay to her.

The explosions dim a bit. Clint throws Darcy closer to the passenger side of the van. The gesture reveals a thin gold band on his left ring finger. She wishes him and Natasha the best and hopes they have a lot of strawberry-blonde killer babies together. She really does. Also, she wants a pony.

"What are you doing here, Darcy?" he asks.

"A girl like me, a place like this, playing it again, Sam?" She snaps her official cap on. "Working. Same as you. Except with less fetish wear."

He takes in the sky-blue crest and the grains of rice littering the ground. "You're supposed to be in admin."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Your grad paper. It was admin stuff."

"When did you read my Masters thesis?"

"You left it all over the place."

So of course he read it because you could take the assassin-spy out of the Helicarrier for a biweekly bump 'n' spank, but you couldn't take the Helicarrier out of the assassin-spy. Darcy grips her jeans. "I still need to deliver these supplies."

"There's nothing left back there to deliver." He mutters something else into his Stark Trekkie earpiece but she doesn't catch it which is probably a good thing considering his world-is-dead-to-me game face. That look there has got to be how he manages to hold his own alongside a ragey radioactive Shrek, the posterboy of Ye Olde Norse Fratparty, and the All-American Roid-Boy.

"Also, I need to pee," she whispers.

"Don't," says Clint.

"I haven't gone to the bathroom in, like, twelve hours."

"If you pee near me, I'll tell everyone about your Jonas Brothers playlist."

"You are a burlap bag of cat dicks."

He shifts. Releases four arrows in no time flat. Darcy waits for a death gurgle or a revenge howl but no sound is good sound, she supposes, a theory supported when shit hits the jet engine thirty seconds later. There's shrapnel, and screaming (her), and arrows (him), and bullets (everyone even her 'cause humanitarian aid workers aren't supposed to carry weapons but screw the world if Darcy was going to a war zone without knowing how to shoot), and what might have been a rocket launcher as a grand finale. Clint wraps an arm around her waist and pitches her ten feet away, then there's smoke and fire and Darcy covers her head against the debris.

Hollywood also gets a giant fuck-you from Darcy for the complete inadequacy of shaky-cam . Shaky-cam doesn't even begin to cover all the feelings. _Every_ feeling, all at the same time, blurring into the worst cemetery Slurpee of popcorn bullet-ringing, heart-thundering, bladder-aching, hyper-coloured, panic attack of having the bullseye in a firefight between your own damn eyes and when the worst of it is over, she can't breathe properly. For a second, Darcy panics, thinking things like collapsed lungs, gaping chest wounds, crushed windpipes. She gives herself a mental shake, opens her eyes, and it's just Clint lying on top of her. She fantasized this seven tequila benders ago. Well, not exactly this with the whole large-calibre bullets thing. She's not _that_ kinky.

Clint's lips move against her cheek. "You all right, baby?" he asks. His breath is curry mixed with napalm in the morning and Darcy wishes really, really, really, really, _really_ hard that Clint hadn't been that good at sex because her body remembers the weight of him on her despite the whole life-threateningness of it all. Or maybe this is the girl version of a fight boner. Or maybe she really _is_ that kinky so, there's another reason she makes her mama cry.

"Did we get them all?" she asks back.

"Yeah."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"How're you sure?"

He snorts. 

"Right. Hawkeye. Earth's mightiest anachronism. Wait, no, that's Thor. You might have to arm wrestle for it. We'll sell tickets and limited edition action figures."

"For fucks' sake, Darcy, shut up."

Darcy glares. "Fine. Get off me and let me pee."

"You're going to need to help me get off," he says.

"What are you--" She feels the sticky pool of blood before she sees it. "You're hit? How're you hit? Isn't Stark practically modding your suit up with force fields or something by now?"

"I left the force field in my other jet."

"Oh my god, it's bad enough you run into a gun fight with pointy sticks, you don't even wear space armour when you do it? Are you crazy? Are you absolutely fucking nuts? You-- you're certifiably brain-dead! I've met e-tards with more smarts, oh my fucking god!" Darcy hits his arms and shoulders, and thinks about kicking his shin then remembers he's bleeding. "You're an ass. A dick. An ass-dick."

"I like 'burlap bag of cat dicks' better." The dead-to-the-world-even-you look fades from Clint's face and he drops his head on her shoulder. He reeks of oily scalp and Kevlar. Darcy is a sick, sad, frustrated human being because she takes a giant whiff. As she does, she spots the twisted piece of former-van sticking out of his right kidney. She peers down between their bodies and there's the same twisted piece, angled to the right from his navel, dripping red.

"Clint."

"Hmm?"

"I'm also going to vomit."

"What is this, body fluid bingo?" He grins down at her then his breath hitches. "Heh. I'm so funny, I'm laughing my guts out."

Darcy slaps him. "Ass. Dick."

"No, thanks?"

She smacks his other cheek. "Tell me how to help you, idiot."

Slowly, oh so slowly, Darcy tilts Clint to his less injured side. She hauls a half-filled sack of grain out of the van and puts his feet up on it. Most of the first aid kit miraculously survived including a bottle of oral antibiotics and rolls of gauze. Under his instructions, she hacks her spare shorts in half and makes a couple of cloth doughnuts to slip over the metal bits so the rest of the dressing wouldn't put pressure on it or move it around. Darcy is _so_ not ready mentally prepared to use this level of first aid training. None of her other ops went this pear-shaped. Clint's the closest person to blame so she goes with that.

His eyes are closed. She taps his shoulder. "Still with me?"

One corner of Clint's mouth curls up but he doesn't open his eyes. "Nah. You ended it."

"And if I hadn't you and Natasha wouldn't've gotten married so really, you should thank me."

Lines furrow between his eyebrows as he rubs the gold band on his left hand. "I'm not married."

"Aww, is that a promise ring? Are you going steady? I hear on prom night, you get to third base." Darcy tries to go for flippy nonchalance but misses the turn at bitter wreck.

Clint opens one eye. "I'm separated. And my ex isn't Tasha."

"Who is she?" Darcy asks before she can hit herself with a giant humiliation stick. She really needs to trade her eBay brain-to-mouth filter for a superior brand on Amazon. "Don't answer that. It's none of my business. I think there's a shock blanket in the van somewhere. In what used to be the van. Are you calling-- call people. I'll just-- blankets."

Six quick steps and she's on the other side of the van wreckage where she's safe to have an complete nervous breakdown without an audience. Darcy presses her eyeballs to her knees, breathing through her clattering teeth, through the lump in her throat. It's not that she used to sleep with Clint or that she could have honestly fallen in love with him if he wasn't a candygram of issues and also shoots people for America. And it's not the fact that she's spent a grand total of four weeks home in the past two years, missing the birth of Jane and Thor's kid, and her brother's grad. It's not even the fucking absolute toejam of a world she's seen in the past two years, things that've made her question her faith in humanity, things she knew her textbooks glazed over but, Jesus H Christ on a corndog, did they have to stucco that glaze on? It's not that. It's not only that. Darcy's tired. And she's scared. And she's tired of pretending her amazeballs talent in logistics keep her from being scared. And she really does need to pee.

"I can solve one of my problems anyway," she mutters to herself.

Cleaned up, Darcy returns to Clint, carrying a bottle of water. He's breathing evenly but shallow. The bloodstains on the dressings are larger. She lifts his head and his eyes fly open, his pupils pinpoints. "Wet your mouth. I'm not sure if you should be allowed to drink but you need to have antibiotics."

"A little water's fine for gut wounds," he says and takes a couple mouthfuls.

Darcy unfolds the shock blanket, which had been in the first aid kit all along-- hello avoidance-- and drapes it over him. "How long until help comes?"

"Don't know. Went to voicemail."

"The Avengers have voicemail."

"Usually means things aren't going to plan. Or it's Tuesday. Tuesdays are like that."

"Oh good. I'd hate to be the outlier in our little demographic of delusional overachievers."

He smiles. "You still talk like-- Sometimes I miss you so much, I want to shit my shorts."

Darcy rolls her eyes. "Geez, with lines like that, it's no wonder the ladies come a'running."

His hands are cold. That's all wrong. Clint was always a walking radiator; Darcy's the one who needs to wear double-socks any time outside of June to August in New Mexico. She rubs his right hand, her palms snagging on his calluses, then his left.

"Blood's just going to the important parts," says Clint.

"Then we have a problem 'cause we both know your main brain's in your penis."

"Christ, don't make me laugh. You'll loosen the dressings."

Now his forearms are cold, too. Darcy nuts up and crawls under the shock blanket just like every Nicholas Sparks movie, not to mention every pornographic parody of Nicholas Sparks movies, out there. She presses his hands near her armpits and tucks her face near his collarbone, careful to stay curled away from the rest of his torso. He pulls one of his hands away and cups her chin.

"Hey you," she whispers.

"Hey." 

His lips ghost over hers. Darcy hangs on to his other hand so tightly he might start bleeding from there, too. She catches his lower lip between her teeth and he lets out a whine like he got poked in the soft bits. Again. He exhales, ragged, a little wet; she breathes him in. She slips her tongue in his mouth. There's the curry but tinged with the penny-taste of blood, and yeah, this is officially on the wrong side of kinky but before she can pull away, Clint swipes his thumb across her cheek.

"Darcy." He kisses the tip of her nose. "Baby, don't cry. Don't cry, you'll wreck me if you cry, baby, please. Darcy, please. Please." 

He moves the kiss to her cheek, then her lips, then they pretty much escalate to tongue-fucking from there, and she can't get enough of him but if she gets any closer, she'd knee that goddamn metal rod through his belly and he'll bleed out in nothing flat. When he breaks off to breathe a little too long, Darcy's eyes flutter open. He's staring at her, gaze out of focus, his thumb on her chin. She nips the meat of his palm; his nostrils flare.

"I never..." he begins. Swallows. Begins again. "When we get back, we need to... you know I… I need... a vehicle."

Darcy blinks. "Um, yeah, but the van--"

"No, there are vehicles coming. At least two. Four o'clock."

Just like that, the bow-chicka-wow fog lifts. Darcy ensures her gun's still loaded and crouches behind the van wreckage. She will honest to God burn the world if anyone tries anything. Even from this distance, she recognizes the SHIELD unitards inside the hummer. She lowers her weapon.

"Cavalry's here," she tells Clint.

He lets his head go limp and hisses. Agents jump out, the Hulk un-Hulkified jumps out-- she recognizes him because he's wearing yoga pants and a linen shirt instead of the unitard-- and Sam--

"Sam?" Darcy says out loud.

"Darcy!" He sweeps her up, squeezes her against his Downy-fresh t-shirt, his arms wiry around her, and she returns the embrace automatically. "I've been crazy with worry for you, girl. I couldn't stop thinking about you... about what might have happened. We think someone deliberately sabotaged the comm lines 'cause your plans always go smoothly and, hell, Darcy, I'm just so happy you're okay. Are you okay, darlin'? You've got blood on you."

"I'm good," she says, her own voice sounding far away. "I'm okay. It's not my blood. "

The medics rushed past with a stretcher but not!Hulk was already at Clint's side with a megasized first aid suitcase. "This is a great field bandage, Ms. Lewis. Hawkeye, we're going to give you just a little bit of an analgesic."

Sam steps back, keeping one arm slung around her shoulder. "The Avengers, huh? They sure live up to their reputation. Thank you so much for looking after our Darcy, Mr. Hawkeye."

The medics pause just long enough for Clint to say something like "All part of the job," but he's staring past her left shoulder making all the wrong assumptions--because he is an ass and full of sumption-- as they rush his stretcher to the Hummer and Darcy can still taste him, can still feel the heat of his breath and the cold of his hands, and to fuck with this Merchant-Ivory bullshit!

She makes a run for his stretcher. "Cli--Hawkeye!" They're loading him on. She snatches a marker out of not!Hulk's shirt pocket-- a pocket protector? Reallly?-- to scribble her phone number on the inside arch of his bow. "Get better. Sign the divorce papers. Call me. Bring condoms."

Clint lets out a wheezy laugh. "I'm the fucking love of your life, Darcy Lewis." They take him away.

Darcy crawls into the other Hummer, the remnants of his scent lingering on the roof of her mouth. She smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "3 Purple Butterflies" by Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker which is Darcy's life theme song.


End file.
